The present invention relates generally to the field of water sports, and more particularly, is directed to equipment useful in the sport of water skiing.
Water skiing as a sport has gained great popularity in recent years due primarily to the availability of suitable lightweight, powerful, inboard and outboard motor boats having sufficient speed capability to tow a person through the water on a pair of water skis. To date, most of the design and manufacturing effort in this sport has related particularly to the water skis and related equipment and no satisfactory method has been devised to suitably handle the tow line itself. Most prior workers in the art have simply provided a tow line which is affixed to the boat at one end and has the second end equipped with a wood or plastic handle to enable the skier to easily grip the line for propelling through water while performing the sport of water skiing.
The line itself has conventionally been manually handled so that the line is either played out of the boat or pulled into the boat by hand, thereby resulting in a relatively unsatisfactory and sometimes even unsafe condition. By utilizing such hand operations, the tow line is simply manually piled onto the deck of the boat thereby creating tangled, unsafe footing and other unsatisfactory conditions. Also, when manually playing out such a line, because of the relatively unscientific method of piling the line on the deck, such line has a tendency to snarl, knot and tangle.
Additionally, it should be remembered that the propeller of the boat continuously presents a real hazard to the person in the water and care must always be exercised to assure that the water skier is maintained at a safe distance from the boat propeller. Numerous accidents have been documented when this simple safety rule has not been observed. The presently available equipment has no known method for preventing accidental contact with the moving mechanical parts and accordingly, the person in the water must constantly keep alert.